The human machine has turned on. Spots appear before your closed lids upon each exhalation of breath. It fumes out of your mouth, then French inhales into your nostrils, burning nose hairs and other areas of the skull – namely directly between the ears – with its stale, empty exhaust. Your mouth is hot and thirsty, and as you sit up for water your stomach drops into the mattress you’re propped on, only to Slinky back to the level of your heart, which also feels stale and empty.

You pause, as your thoughts assemble and your brain’s GPS slowly finds your position and maps your surroundings. You know you’re not Home, not your Home, or wherever that “H” word is meant to connote. But, you know that your relative location in space/time has positioned you in a place where that “H” word holds great significance if used in this very spot by someone other than yourself.

Your motor skills are working on a basic, primal survival mode, and you’re able to reach your hand out for the glass of water, whose rightfully anticipated necessity has placed it not too far from arms reach. You raise the glass to your lips only to have the first several gulps-worth pour down your chin. By this point, it’s apparent that you have a drinking problem. Tossing the empty glass onto the bedside table’s edge, you give it a few half-assed nudges toward the center in foresight of your own clumsy habits.

Now it hits you. The sickness. There is an impulse of what needs to be done, with little regard for self-image or pride. As many abstract expressionist painters or freeform jazz musicians claim, ‘there’s an inner-burning creative compulsion deep in one’s core, and something needs to come out.’ In this instance, the creative product will likely resemble partly digested food and stomach bile.

You spring up too fast, causing the bubble inside your torso’s spirit level to tilt all the way to one side, and then back, and then forth, and back, and forth, and back, and forth until centering just enough to plow through the bathroom door, where the dominatrix of your instinct forces you onto your knees, and here you are submitting yourself to just another john.

Swinging open the lid, you grab hold of the piss dampened rim and heave your head into the bowel, bobbing for apples of dignity that never surface. The puke spills out in a cacophony of white-noise-feeling. It splashes your face and hands, but at the moment this isn’t a concern.

After fully dispensing bodily fluids, your brain drops into reality, suddenly aware of its surroundings. You now feel the filth of the instance; depraved, demoralized, disgusted. The high of instinctual motions has faded away, leaving your analytical reason to feast on all that is wrong with the moment. Kneeling on the bathroom floor, the stale urine that coats the toilet is now much closer, and there is an overwhelming feeling that you have committed what Catholics might call a sin.

Straightening back up, you strain to look at yourself in the mirror. Your hair is pushed up on the left side, your face is sickly and unshaven, and you have water splashed down the front of your shirt; or maybe it’s vomit. The mirror becomes a low-res television screen, and every channel is broadcasting a marathon of infomercials, advertising the miracle cure to rid you of your grayscale life.

This might severely taint my reputation, but I couldn’t pass it up, so here we go. This week I came across a blog post that argued against same-sex marriage. You can find it here. These sort of conversations/posts aren’t typically my cup of tea, but every once in a while I get the inclination to be an asshole, so I wrote a response.

Now, my response is completely satire. Please don’t take me at my word.If you spend enough time on the internet, you begin to see a lot of arguments sprout up in comment feeds (especially on YouTube) and they tend to go nowhere. So, I prefer to use satire (whether it’s actually funny is debatable) when voicing my opinion to things I don’t like, rather than bickering about it.

That’s where you come in. You see, I would much rather see what you have to say. Below is the comment feed between myself and “The Solitary Conservative.” I’m in blue and he’s in red (at least I think it’s a he). Please feel free to leave comments at the bottom. I won’t be restricting anything from going in, so say whatever you really feel, and maybe we’ll at least get something interesting out of this. Here’s the full version, including the comments that “The Solitary Conservative” blocked.

I completely agree with your position. It makes so much sense! Gays should not be allowed to marry because they can’t make babies, and babies are awesome, and our world needs as many babies as it can get. If marriage is about making babies, and gays can’t make them, then of course they shouldn’t be allowed to marry.

I can understand where you’re coming from because, being adopted myself, my parents couldn’t reproduce properly but they still chose to get married. I always thought this was wrong growing up, and said “mom and dad, I love you, but you shouldn’t be married. Marriage is all about making babies.” And my mom would always come back with something about ovarian cancer, but she’s wrong and God agrees with me that she’s wrong. It’s like I was telling my friend yesterday, “black people should not be allowed to live in our society.” I wasn’t saying that they should be killed, I was just saying that they should live in their own special area. The dictionary definition of society says “society is a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests.” And black people have like Kwanza and rap and stuff, and totally don’t fit the definition of what society should be. Sorry for the rant, but I’m really trying to say that I agree with you completely: Fags shouldn’t be allowed to marry, and blacks should go back to Africa. Keep the faith strong, and God bless. Peace.

Thanks for the comment, but how does this respond to any of what I said?

I was merely boasting of your immense logical capacity! Marriage is obviously all about sex, and sex is all about making babies, and gays can’t make babies so they can’t get married. Duh. And wasn’t it Carl Sagan who proved that gay marriage is the leading cause of black holes?

You say it’s a “metaphysical impossibility” for gays to get married, even though there are plenty of gays who are legally married, and for that I even envy your ability to brush away plain truth and implement your own brand of personal logic. You laugh reason, virtue, love, and humanity in the face. I’m on your side man, those qualities are for pussies and liberals and faggots. The world needs more men like us to tell people how they should live their lives!

Anyway, I’m sure God will send all the gays to Hell anyway because “God hates faggots,” or whatever my minister keeps repeating. Keep up the great posts, and maybe one day we will finally have a government that is man enough to fully piss on the egalitarian ideal.

“You say it’s a “metaphysical impossibility” for gays to get married, even though there are plenty of gays who are legally married”

This goes to show that you don’t understand my argument. Calling same-sex couples married is one thing, being actually married is another. If, as I argue, marriage is rooted in the biological realities of human nature, then same-sex marriage is a logical impossibility, despite the fact that we may label such arrangements as marriages. Calling a dog’s tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg. The same principle applies here.

Naw man, WE’RE bigots. Bigots as in “One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics.” I mean, we both strongly identify with conservatism, right… and Christianity?

I’m sorry if I come off sarcastic; my beliefs can be a little extreme. But I sympathize with your cause completely. Marriage is totally not a concept of human construction. It exists just as physically as a “dog’s tail.” Marriage can’t be what the dictionary supposes as, “A union between persons that is recognized by custom or religious tradition as a marriage.” The dictionary was written by faggot loving liberals. Marriage is biological, and being gay totally isn’t.

No, you’re acting bigoted in the sense that you refuse to engage with the arguments of the opposition, choosing instead to respond with satire instead of a well-reasoned argument.

Once again, you still haven’t engaged with my arguments, so your comments are now moderated. Further sarcasm will not be approved. I expect all commenters here to engage rationally with my arguments. Those who don’t lose the privilege of commenting.

Oops… I thought there was well-reasoned argument in my satire. I always found satire more fun than argument when interacting in text, so I’m not looking to launch into a full online debate with the written word. It lacks too many elements of rhetoric. I was just having fun.

So, in brief, marriage is a concept, a ceremony, a tradition, etc. It does not physically exist as you presume. People might be biologically attracted to each other, but the institution of marriage is constructed from belief, not tangible reality.

Personally, when it comes to defining the concepts within my own belief system (which I like to abbreviate as BS) I like to make them all-inclusive, and promote, to the best possible degree, a sense of equality. If you prefer to outcast certain sects (not to be confused with sex) from your BS, and create a reality for yourself that only includes people like you, that’s your thing.

“So, in brief, marriage is a concept, a ceremony, a tradition, etc. It does not physically exist as you presume. People might be biologically attracted to each other, but the institution of marriage is constructed from belief, not tangible reality.”

I gave an argument that marriage is a biological reality grounded in human nature — specifically, the proper purpose of sex. Merely asserting your contrary opinion is not a refutation of it. You need an argument to warrant your conclusion.

“I like to make them all-inclusive, and promote, to the best possible degree, a sense of equality.”

This begs the question. The meaning of “equal” will depend on the nature of the thing being discussed. To treat people equally is to give them all the rights that they deserve, but what they deserve is the very issue being debated. To know what people deserve, we need to have some grasp of the nature of the thing in question. But if there is no such thing as an objective standard in which marriage is grounded, then the idea of “equality” in the marriage debate makes absolutely no sense. So ironically, in order to invoke the equality argument, marriage must be something other than a mere social construct.

So I was sitting on my couch watching 90s cartoons while tactfully planning how I would prepare for a zombie apocalypse when I accidently kicked my PBR can over onto my favorite flannel. I was paying attention and all, but my fitted pants sometimes squeeze uncomfortably and send my Converse Chucks kicking out aimlessly. I’ve been told I need looser fitting pants, but these were like $90 so I know they were made well and will last for a long time.

As I got up to grab a paper towel, I eyed a commercial coming on the television for Sonic, and there was a large man with his family slamming on these grease battered burgers, and I thought “thank god I’m a vegan.” Not that I believe in god. I believe that religions are brainwash to get people to follow established norms, and that all religions should be outlawed to get people thinking for themselves, like me.

I made it to the kitchen, and when I reached out for the paper towels I saw my ‘anchor’ tattoo out of the corner of my eye. I’m really into ships and pirates and anything that has a rugged, seaward look. I have a skull and crossbones on my chest too. I think they’re rad, and they define me as an individual.

I’d say my favorite band is the Decemberists because they like to sing about ships and stuff like that. They look like they’re from the days of antiquity, or whatever, and that’s totally rad. Lately I’ve been getting into a lot of dubstep.

Anyway, I grabbed the paper towels and started to wipe the spilt beer, when my glasses fell off my face again. This happens sometimes when I tilt my head down, because my rims are so thick, but they represent my bookish, philosophical side so I have to just remind myself to keep a level head. Not in the sense of the idiom, but literally.

With my paper towels in hand, I walked out of the kitchen and passed the birthday card my girlfriend got for me on the fridge. I had to stop and read it again, because it’s fricken hilarious. The front has a kitten wearing a sweater, and he has a mustache and a sombrero. The kitten is looking majestically off into the sunset, and the inside of the card says, “I hope you have a birthday as random as you are.” Haha lol. Rofl. Kittens are the bee’s knees, and anything with a moustache is genius. Where do they come up with this stuff!?!

Sitting back on the couch, another commercial came on. This one was for American Eagle Outfitters. I can’t believe people can be manipulated by these advertisements into conforming to a style. I mean, all these people look the same. I tend to stray from cultural norms and do my own thing. I don’t let the adman tell me how to think.